Line in the Sand
by taye patterson
Summary: We all have lines that we won't cross,places we won't go, and things we just won't do. When Superman is approached by the FBI to help with a case involving espionage, how many lines in the sand will he have to cross?


**Line in the Sand**

Superman and all related characters, names, and indicia are trademarks of DC Comics c 2002. All rights reserved.

"I came as fast as I could, what's the situation?" Superman folded his massive arms across his broad, barrel chest, nearly eclipsing the large 'S' emblazoned on it, and met the eyes of an older man with silver hair in a black suit and tie.

Without offering a greeting, special agent in charge of the counterintelligence division of the FBI's Metropolis field office, Nathaniel Holliday motioned towards a large view screen on the opposite side of the room. Superman could make out a small rectangular device in the palm of his hand, it looked like a compact version of a television remote. He pointed it at the screen and up popped an image of a pale middle aged man. He was thin with dark close cropped hair and wire rimmed glasses framing a pair of beady black eyes.

"This is professor Terry Pinola.," special agent Holliday spoke. "He was the chief scientists on a top secret military project known only as Project Justice." He pointed the remote at the screen again and up popped an image of professor Pinola dropping a briefcase into a garbage can. "He was also a spy for the Chinese." After another press of the button, there was an image of a sharp dressed Chinese man retrieving the briefcase. "Our investigation has uncovered some very disturbing information indeed." He clasped his hands behind his back and stared up at the towering superhero. "Apparently the Chinese got to him months ago, which means they know everything about _this _project as well as past and maybe even future projects."

"And…what exactly do you want me to do about this? Volcanoes, earthquakes, rampaging aliens sure. But, espionage?" A quizzical looked twisted his face. "I'm not so sure that's part of my jurisdiction agent Holliday."

"But-" agent Holliday tried to intercede before he was cutoff.

"For me to act as an agent of the United States, given my commitment to the Justice League, could only result in a disaster."

"I thought disasters were your specialty."

"_Not _the public relations kind."

"The question you've got to ask yourself is, when it all boils down, what do you consider yourself?"

Superman paused for a moment to consider the question. Sure he was a high ranking member of the Justice League, and the last Kryptonian alive, but perhaps more than that, above all else he was an American. Since birth the good ol' red, white, and blue had been ingrained into his psyche. It had been the basis behind all of his beliefs; truth, justice, and the American way, how could he turn his back on her when she obviously needed him. The FBI wasn't usually one to beat down the doors of the superhero community asking for help, instead preferring to stick to their time proven methods of crime fighting. So, for them to climb down from their high horse and personally ask him for assistance, meant that the situation must be dire in deed.

Yet still, there were certain rules against this type of thing, lines in the sand. The Justice League had already made a public declaration to the people of the world that they would not choose sides; that they were there for the protection of all mankind. Yet, here he was, faced with a decision.

He automatically knew what Bruce would say in regards to those lines in the sand. He would say that some lines should absolutely never be crossed, and some lines, absolutely had to be crossed. But which situation was this?

"I'm proud to call myself an American, sir. Above _all _else." Superman spoke the words with conviction and stuck out his chest like a proud robin.

"Glad to hear it son…glad to hear it."

The SAC led Superman over to a table with a large map on it.

"China," Superman stated.

"Yes," the SAC answered. "Here at the FBI we don't normally handle intelligence operations, our expertise lies more along the lines of counterintelligence. However, we are not without connections. Namely the CIA. They have provided all of the intelligence for your mission. Agent Holliday pointed to a red dot along the Eastern Coast of China. "This is where the complex is." Two young women dressed in dark dress suits came and removed the map replacing it with a new map. This one gave a closer satellite image of the installation. "And here is a closer look." It was a six building complex with the tallest building looking to be about 12 stories high. The other five varied in height from two stories to eight. "I won't begin to tell you how to do your job," agent Holliday said, smoothing out the map. "And any support we send will probably just get in your way. Now, this is all the reconnaissance we have; we have yet to locate the weapon, and that's where you come in. We just figured we'd show you the door and let you do all the knocking."

"Okay, is that it?" Superman asked.

"Unless you need a ride there, that should do it."

"Well then I'm off."

"Good hunting…oh and Superman…one more thing."

High above the Pacific Ocean tearing through the atmosphere at over 30 times the speed of sound, Superman grew anxious as he neared the drop zone. Even at this break neck pace, he was sure that he would be visible to any radar in the area, if only for a second, but for the presence of this new suit the FBI and CIA had made for him. All black and made from a special cooling anti radar mesh, he was virtually invisible to all radar within range. He had to admit, the all black uniform wasn't an entirely new experience. He had worn different colored uniforms before; first when he came back from the dead he wore the exact same uniform as he had on now, or an earlier version of it, with a silver s on the chest. Then after the after a close encounter with a creature who had the power to devour whole stars, he switched to a blue and white uniform. He had also gained strange new powers after that incident as well, but all of that was behind him now.

As he continued to approach the target he slowed his speed considerably and used his enhanced vision to survey the complex. It was just like the map had said, six buildings, maximum security. The security wasn't the problem though, the problem was finding that damn weapon. Immediately he regretted rushing blindly into this. Bruce would've at least asked what the weapon was. Blind loyalty was certainly a double edged sword if there ever was one.

After a few brief moments of searching, he sighed. _Looks like I'll have to do this the hard way_, he thought. He thought about dropping down to a lower height to scan the basements but it was the middle of the afternoon in China and in his black outfit he would stick out like a sore thumb.

He touched down on the rooftop of the tallest building. The place was swarming with guards. There were four manned gun emplacements in each corner of the rooftop. Machine guns, probably .50 caliber or higher.

Landing on top of the tallest building was a good move, because none of the guards on the shorter buildings would be able to see what he was doing. He touched down without making a sound and with a burst of impossible speed took out all four guards. Controlling his superhuman strength had been something he had learned to master as soon as he began developing his powers. How else would he have functioned in the real world. What with hugging friends and love ones, or shaking hands, or even making love. Control was something he was very capable of and he used a strike that Batman had taught him to disable the men, forming a knife edge with his hand and striking at the base of the skull. Too hard and the men would've died instantly; to soft and they might have called for help, but done just right and the men.

After clearing the first rooftop he bound all four men with their own clothes. Then with another burst of incredible speed, made his way down to the next tallest building and so on and so on until the high ground was once again his. It was actually ironic when he thought about it; the idea that someone could have the high ground over him when he was capable of soaring up into outer space.

Clark checked the basement of the shortest building, if this weapon wasn't hear, then where could it be. He hoped all of this effort wasn't for naught.

There was nothing in the basement except supplies and weapons, but there was something behind the basement, a giant steel door. _Jackpot, _he thought and began to make his way through the two story building and down to the basement.

For a man of his considerable talents, getting through the six guards on duty in this building was no real task at all. The first two guards he encountered wielded automatic assault rifles, that they never got to use, because he used his incredible speed and though muted, still formidable punching power to render both men unconscious. His encounters with the remaining guards ended much the same, with him hiding all of their limp unconscious bodies in a nearby janitor's closet.

As he crept surreptitiously down to the basement, he tried his best to cling to the shadows, created after he used to heat vision to disable the lights and cameras on the lowest level.

He had to admit though, he understood the thrill that Bruce probably derived out of all of this cloak and dagger business.

Up ahead loomed a gigantic steel door lorded over by two small machine gun toting guards. Neither the guards, nor the door would pose a problem. Before tensing his muscles to deliver his final strikes, he breathed a sigh of relief and of disappointment at the rapidly approaching end of his mission.

His Chinese was a little rusty but he could just barely make out the gist of the two men's conversation. He heard one of the men asking the other if the doctor was single, and he looked back at the huge steel door.

Okay, so their must be a female doctor behind the door. Superman used his x-ray vision to peer through and sure enough there was an attractive female doctor bent over an operating table. But, the kicker was, she wasn't alone. There were a half dozen doctors in the room all draped over an operating table, but there was no weapon in sight.

Finally deciding it was time to move, Superman sprinted from his hiding place in the shadows with blinding speed, and drove the wind out of the lungs of both men with forceful punches straight to their midsections.

With the last two guards incapacitated he decided he had tired of the stealth approach and sank both of his powerful hands into the face of the door like it had been made of paper. With one mighty heave, he snatched the mammoth door off its hinges and tossed it nonchalantly to the side with a thunderous, metallic clank.

His ears were immediately filled with a cacophony of screams from the shocked doctors and scientists. The room looked more like a hospital than a laboratory and Clark ignored the terrified doctors and stalked over to the side of the bed.

"What…is this?" he asked. None of the doctors spoke English. Instead they all ran screaming from the room.

Clark continued to gaze at the body in horror and disgust. It was human, as far as he could tell. Male, with a tangled mess of black hair on his head., he had a thin and athletic build with an angelic face, but his body had been horribly scarred, like he had been in a sword fight with his bare hands…and lost. Speaking of hands, they appeared to be on fire with tiny flames licking the flesh around his fingers. Electrodes lined his body and tubes ran up into his nose and mouth. Superman glanced at the EKG that monitored the young man's lifelines. He was alive, but barely.

What was this all about? Was this the weapon he had been sent to destroy? This…_boy_?

No.

Absolutely not.

This was one line in the sand, that he would definitely not be crossing.

But, what should he do?

He looked around the room and then brought his gaze back to the motionless body, and was immediately galvanized into action. He could have the boy in America getting treatment in no time. He began removing the tubes and electrodes from the boy's body.

"…Stop."

Superman continued removing the constraints, oblivious.

"Don't."

Superman heard the boy that time, and he turned to face him. "I'm gonna get you out of here, okay? Everything's going to be alright." As Clark said the words, he hoped his Chinese was good enough to convey his meaning.

"You don't understand," the young man continued. Superman began to feel a burning sensation on his wrist. "I… wanted this." Superman looked down to see the boy's thin powerful hand completely engulfed in flames and his bony fingers wrapped around the man of steel's wrist.

Before Superman could react, a wave of hellish flame washed over his body, catapulting him back through the gaping hole created by the missing steel door. As Clark crashed into the cement flooring of the basement he could feel the ground crack and pile up behind him as the momentum of the blast caused his body to dig up a twenty foot long channel of cement and moist earth.

The boy, in the arrogance of his youth, let out a soft, giggle of amusement, and began walking towards his fallen opponent.

Superman slowly climbed to his feet, the top half of his suit completely burned off and his flesh blackened from soot and smoke caused by the intense heat of the blast. "You… don't… know what you're doing." The boy cocked his head in confusion, as if to ask why wasn't his opponent dead. "Listen to me," Clark pleaded, "this is not a game. Look what they've done to you." The sorrow in Superman's eyes was unmistakable, and the sentiment in his voice was evident, yet it fell on deaf ears.

"Look what they've done to me?" the young Asian man asked. "They've made me… into a god!" He gazed down at his flaming hands. The hellish light flickered and pulsed like a beating heart. "I could burn Buddha himself… and" he looked back up at Superman… "yet you still stand. How could this be? Who…are you?"

"Me? I'm just a man, here to tell you the truth. Would you like to here the truth?" He stepped towards the young man, with his powerful fists clenched. "The truth is…" he took another step… "You… are not…a… _god_."

The boy was teeming with rage and he took a wild swing at Superman's head, only to be thrown off balance as his flaming fist connected with nothing but air.

Then, there was a thunderous crack as Superman's fist impacted with the man's midsection, driving all the wind from his lungs.

As Superman watched the young fire thrower's body rocket deep into the wall of the basement penetrating the bedrock, he berated himself for the use of such blind force. So far, he knew that his opponent could hurl intense blasts of fire, but he wasn't so sure about the young man's strength or his hardiness.

Seconds later, the worries he once had about the boy being able to take a punch, where lifted as a colossal wave of heat barreled into him at several times the speed of sound. An incredibly powerful shockwave followed a split second later, and for a brief moment, darkness claimed him.

When he came to, he found himself buried under a sixty tons of concrete, steel, glass, and plasterwork which he brushed off like falling leaves in Autumn. When he finally climbed to his feet, he looked around and found that he was standing on the outskirts of a 300 foot wide blast crater. The building that he was in had been completely obliterated and he had just climbed out from under the remains of one of the taller adjacent buildings. He looked around the at the rubble and broken skeletal structure of the three fallen buildings, the others, though damaged remained standing. There were thousands of people trapped inside the wreckage; a lot of them dead, but some of them still lived. He would have to rescue them, but first…

The young man, crashed into Superman with mammoth force, driving him back into the tortured wreckage of the building. As they hit the ground the resulting explosion completely cleared away all the surround ruble and shook the ground for miles around.

Clark winced as the man's hands wrapped around his neck scalding the soft tissue. The smell of his own burning flesh was nauseating and it clung to the back of his throat. The two titans struggled in the center of the massive depression, with Superman fighting to live, and the other fighting to kill.

"Get. Off." Superman managed between clenched teeth. He pried the man's hands from around his neck in a colossal show of strength and then planting two feet in his chest, rocked back and uncoiled his legs like a spring hurling the flailing fire flinger thousands of feet into the air. Then, the man of steel scrambled to his feet, and took off like a missile after his opponent.

When he caught up to him he clasped his fist together and brought them down in a giant arc, hammering the man down two thousand feet to the sea below. As his body plunged deep below the surface it was replaced by a towering geyser of frothy blue ocean. Superman continued the fight diving in after him.

Deep below the surface of the sea, Superman's optic powers continued to work at peak efficiency, and he spotted the prone body of his enemy drifting towards the bottom of the East China Sea. Superman swam over to retrieve the body, but before he could reach it, the young man turned and extended his arm, palm out…

Superman steeled himself for the intense blast of heat that was sure to follow… but nothing happened.

_Of course_, Clark thought. _We're under water_. Superman turned at the hips and delivered a punishing right hand to the jaw of the young man.

The young Asian man skidded across the ocean floor for 20 yards before finally coming to a stop in a cloud of sand. Superman dove directly into the cloud driving both fists into the man's chest breaking two ribs and expelling the remaining air from his lungs. The force of the blow was more than enough to send him shooting backwards through the water.

The young flamethrower writhed in agony as he struggled to breath in the depths of the sea. It was bad enough that a few of his ribs had been broken in the tussle, now he was completely out of oxygen and Superman could tell by the contorted expression he wore.

Swimming towards his newly unconscious opponent he grabbed the man by the ankle and powered his way out of the bluer water and into the slightly less blue sky.

As he hovered a hundred feet above sea level he basked in the warm glow of the yellow sun his wet, jet black hair clung to his face and the water washed away all the soot and scalding battle wounds from his body. There weren't many people with the lung capacity to win an underwater fight with Superman, but now he was faced with another dilemma. Where should he take this person? And more importantly, where was his American counterpart?

The FBI's Metropolis field office was nothing extraordinary as far as buildings were concerned. A rectangular three story construct made of plexi-glass and steel it was home to nearly four hundred agents and 500 support personnel. The entire place was commanded by a director and divided into sections. And in the counterintelligence division, one man reigned supreme.

"You took out the whole of Chinese intelligence in one afternoon." Special agent Holliday shook his old gray head. "God damn son, we should've hire you a long time ago."

Superman glared steel blue daggers at the man standing across from him. Stunning everyone with his tattered appearance, he had burst into the FBI office looking for answers, and wouldn't be satisfied until he got them.

"You think this is a joke? I. Want. Answers. That boy… he was the weapon wasn't he. Only he was a bootleg copy of something you've already created?" He grabbed the agent by the lapels of his jacket and lifted him a full two feet above the floor, glaring into his eyes. "Answer me!"

Had a normal man laid a hand on Special agent Holliday, nearly every gun in the building might've been drawn, but since it was Superman, no one moved a muscle.

"I'm sorry son, you don't have a high enough security clearance for those answers," agent Holliday calmly responded, his feet dangly in the air. "Now. Put. Me. Down."

Begrudgingly through clenched teeth Superman complied. "I want answers Holliday."

"And it doesn't matter."

Superman took a step forward.

"Be careful of your next move alien. You're toeing a very dangerous line right now. If you become an enemy of the FBI you _will _become an enemy of the United States…and the United States does not suffer enemies… take China for example." Holliday laughed.

Superman started like he had been slapped in the face. Now it was "alien," but when they wanted help it had been "American." It took a colossal effort to resist collapsing the entire building around agent Holliday's head, but he somehow he managed… barely.

"You won't use me again," Superman snarled between clenched teeth as he turned to leave. "…EVER."

The End?


End file.
